Past Interviewsand Media Appearances

The Edinburgh Book Review

​ In this time of instant and universal email traffic, built-in grammar checkers, desktop publishing and online writing courses, do we ever stop and think just how writers got by in the olden days? Without having Wikipedia at their beck and call, or being able to drag their laptop to any muse-inducing neck-of-the-woods, how did the authors of yore ever get around to writing their timeless classics? Well, you need wonder no more; Today, American author, dedicated Victorianist and modern-day lady of letters SARAH A. CHRISMAN lets us in on everything we ever wanted to know about her series of Victorian Cycling Club Romance novels and her unique way of writing…

The View

In the first week of December, 2013 Sarah was invited to appear on episode 64 of Whoopi Goldberg's program, "The View" in New York. When Barbara Walters expressed doubts as to her flexibility, she demonstrated toe-touches and jumping jacks!​

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The New York Times

The Return of the Tight SqueezeBy LAREN STOVERPublished: November 22, 2013

When Sarah A. Chrisman received a blue silk rose-patterned corset from her husband, a librarian and bicycle-shop manager, for her 29th birthday, she reluctantly allowed him to lace her into it. She believed then, she said recently, that corsets “deformed, broke bones, tortured and killed.”

But Ms. Chrisman, 33, a massage therapist and Victoriana enthusiast, quickly grew fond of her new undergarment. With constant wear — even sleeping in it — she said that her posture improved, that she ate less and that she transformed not only her wardrobe (from frumpy tees to fitted blouses), but also her waist size, from 32 to 22 inches.This being the “Fifty Shades of Grey” era, it is no surprise that she then decided to write a book about the experience. But nothing about “Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught Me About the Past, the Present, and Myself” (Skyhorse Publishing) is racy. The most suggestive phrase the author uses to describe her newfound silhouette is “showed off my figure to full advantage.”To describe that figure, “I would say ‘womanly’, and that can certainly be sexy,” said Ms. Chrisman, who lives in Port Townsend, Wash., reads 19th-century etiquette manuals, writes snail mail with antique dip pens and has thus far managed to avoid Twitter. “The corset emphasizes the difference between the genders, which I really like. My natural inclination to avoid that term ‘sexy’ per se probably comes out of my training as a massage practitioner, where everything has to be very distinctly delineated. That is, the sex stays out of it.” While clients are respectful of her boundaries, Ms. Chrisman said, she has found herself frequently ogled, questioned and even groped by strangers.The most popular question: Does it hurt? Her answer: “It’s like a hug that lasts all day.” Rudest question: Do you take that thing off before you have sex? Ms. Chrisman refuses to respond to that one.She is not alone among moderns in her revival of what Valerie Steele, the director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, called “probably the most controversial garment in the entire history of fashion” in her book “The Corset: A Cultural History” (Yale University Press, 2001).“Plenty of designers occasionally put a corset in their collections, but I’d say 99 percent of people choose Spanx as an undergarment,” said Dr. Steele, who credits the punks and Vivienne Westwood in the 1970s for giving the corset “the charisma of deviance” and Jean-Paul Gaultier in the ’80s (Madonna wore his corset onstage) for “making underwear as outerwear significant.”Dr. Steele said that designers tend to interpret corsets in two ways: either they’re “fierce, dominatrix, S & M-inspired” or “romantic, glamorous and belle epoch.” Only the hourglass shape remains constant. “A small waist is a signifier of nubile femininity and fertility,” Dr. Steele said.Alexis Lass, a former dominatrix in New York who wrote about her experiences in “The Posh Girl’s Guide to Play” (Seal Press, 2013), has a collection of more than 50 corsets. “Feminists have protested that the cinching of the waist is an ugly example of suffering for ‘beauty,’ but I find waist cinching to be physically and emotionally empowering,” Ms. Lass said, though she has her limits: “I’ve yet to go to Starbucks in my Marie Antoinette corset.” Whether medically sound or not (opinions are mixed, and Ms. Chrisman seeks to debunk the taboos), celebrities, including Jessica Alba and Kourtney Kardashian, have worn corsetlike garments after pregnancy to help recover their figures. Scarlett Johansson wears a white corset on the cover of the December issue of Vogue México. And Dita von Teese, the burlesque star, appears in a scarlet corset and little else on her business card.Ms. von Teese wrote in an email: “People ask if it’s comfortable, and I try to explain that it’s like wearing a very high heel. There is discipline involved, and of course, the quality of the construction is paramount to comfort.” Her collection includes examples from the revered corsetmaker Mr. Pearl, who has collaborated with Mr. Gaultier and Alexander McQueen.Cindy Sibilsky, the producer of a musical based on Xaviera Hollander’s memoir “The Happy Hooker,” likes to throw a suit jacket over a corset. “The modern-day woman wears a corset on the outside as a symbol of her sexual liberation, power and prowess rather than the traditional idea of the corset as a tool of repression and restriction,” she said.But Ms. Chrisman believes that corsets should remain tucked away. “I think that the fact that some people are wearing corsets as outerwear is a very good example of how little privacy there is in modern life,” she said. “People actively invade their own privacy.” Though she conceded: “I will say one thing about the people who wear corsets as outerwear: it does show off the beauty of the garment itself. They are beautiful pieces of art.”Indeed, Mr. Pearl’s creations have prices starting at $10,000, Ms. von Teese wrote. Though Ms. Chrisman said she dreams of owning a Pearl model, her corsets (she now owns a half-dozen) are put through more-quotidian paces. They have set off metal detectors at airports, she said, and ascended Mount Townsend and Hurricane Ridge in Washington state.She emphasized, again, that the corset to her is “strictly underwear” and that she sees herself as “a lady and not a vixen.”Not that there would be anything wrong with that, of course. “The vibrator was invented in the Victorian era,” Ms. Chrisman said. “People forget that.”A version of this article appears in print on November 24, 2013, on page ST12 of the National edition with the headline: The Return of the Tight Squeeze.

Auction prices for the torso-constricting pieces, especially for those in bright colors, have reached the high four figures.

“People are fascinated by body shaping, by what goes on under the garment,” said Karen Augusta, a couture historian and auction house owner. She will be bringing corsets and attachable skirt bustle contraptions to a November sale at her business, Augusta Auctions, in Manhattan. She added, “A lot of it is considered erotic, which brings out the crowds.”...

“I loved the soft feeling of being hugged all day,” Sarah A. Chrisman, a writer and massage therapist in Port Townsend, Wash., writes in a book due out this fall, “Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught Me about the Past, the Present, and Myself” (Skyhorse Publishing).

The corset has long been unfairly maligned, Ms. Chrisman said in a phone interview. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a 19th-century cereal magnate and health proselytizer, set off a widespread anti-corset movement by describing the garments as a “barbarous practice” that caused “painful menstrual derangements.” But he was not quite a reliable denouncer, Ms. Chrisman said, given his other extreme views: he was married but largely celibate, and he called masturbation “a crime doubly abominable.”

She credits corsets for improving women’s posture, diet and self-image. “It’s like a good supportive pair of shoes,” she said.

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Today

Sarah Chrisman never wanted to wear a corset, but after her husband gave her one for her 29th birthday, she says the old-fashioned undergarment changed her life.

"It was actually a moment of great revelation," the history lover, now 33, told TODAY.com of the experience, which allowed her to finally take advantage of her longtime obsession with Victorian-era attire.

She was inspired by the corset to delve deeper into wearing women's fashions from the Victorian age, and began to dress that way exclusively.

These days, she and her husband, Gabriel, are committed to living as Victorian a life as possible, within modern-day constraints. "We're as immersed as we can be," Chrisman said.

That means she washes herself "with a pitcher and basin every day," hand-sews all of her own clothes (from natural fibers), doesn't drive a car, and uses oil lamps for most of the lighting in their Victorian home in Port Townsend, Wash. When it comes to cooking, Chrisman uses a book of 19th century recipes, and said translating the centuries-old descriptions into modern-day measurements has proved the biggest challenge.

"It's involved a lot of experimentation to see what works and what doesn't," she said.

In Chrisman's book, she explains her motivation for living old-school.The couple had always been fascinated by historical clothing and collected it, but while he could wear the vintage items, she couldn't find anything to fit her 21st-century body — all the clothes were tailored to a woman cinched in by a corset.

So, after years of resisting the shapewear over concerns it was unhealthy and uncomfortable, Chrisman was thrilled to find that putting it on wasn't nearly as bad as she'd imagined. "It was tough at first, but it just took some getting used to," she recalled.

As a massage therapist, she says her clients are very understanding and kind about her clothing. Gabriel joins in as often as he can, wearing Victorian clothes to his job at a library and on his days off, but abstaining on the days he works in a bicycle shop across town. They currently use a refrigerator to store their food, but are hoping to switch to an ice box for even more authenticity down the line.

Chrisman says they channel the Victorian era as a way of better understanding history. "The clothing is a really interesting window into everyday people's lives," she said. "It's a different way of looking at the world, and that was their world."

Ironically, she sometimes has to turn to modern technology to be transported to the past. Finding historically accurate light bulb replicas of what people would have used at that time, for example, entails shopping online.

"In the 19th century, it would have been very easy — we could have ordered it all from Sears and Roebuck," she laughs. "The 21st century Sears and Roebuck is the Internet."

In a book released Nov. 1, titled "Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught Me About the Past, the Present, and Myself," Chrisman offers insight, and explains her choice.

She says she was inspired to write the book after constant questioning about her appearance. "The reactions we get run the full gamut...everything from people who are wonderfully complimentary and kind to the ones that are incredibly vitriolic," she said.

"We've had everything from people stopping me to tell me I'm beautiful, or people stopping me to scream at me that I'm oppressing women. I never expected my underwear to be such a polarizing issue for complete strangers."

But despite the criticism, she says the experience has been incredibly positive, and she hopes other people who hear her story can apply some of the lessons she's learned to their own lives: "It's important to follow one's own interests and one's own dreams, and one should never let strangers dictate one's life," she says.

And for those who think it's just a gimmick, Chrisman says living this way is no experiment: "It's just our life."

You.Beauty

The Woman Who Wears (and Sleeps in!) Corsets Every DaySarah Chrisman’s new book details how embracing the Victorian figure transformed her self-esteem and led to lasting happiness with her body.By Grace Gold |November 1st, 2013

Women’s fashion has long elicited controversy at every twist and turn of the trend, but no article of clothing has been celebrated and reviled quite like the traditional corset.Today, popular opinion views the lace-up design as restrictive both literally and figuratively, with the rigid design coming to symbolize the social repression of the 18thto 19th century American woman.Others have fetishized the garment as the ultimate in seduction wear. It’s not uncommon to see satin and bow-bedecked versions selling alongside massage oil and teddies (I’m not talking Paddington Bear) at adult lingerie stores.So when "Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught Me about the Past, the Present and Myself" (Skyhorse Publishing: November 2013) landed on my desk, I was intrigued by the writer’s claim that wearing a corset was such a positive, body-loving—if not evenfeminist— move on her part.At the beginning, author Sarah Chrisman is as dubious as anyone else about corsets. Having received one from her well-intentioned husband as a gift, she puts aside her initial reluctance to wear what she thinks is an uncomfortable and perhaps even subversive garment to give it just one polite try—and is shocked when she enjoys it.Not only does she lose two sizes in the waist immediately upon lacing up, but an attractive hourglass takes form on her self-described fuller figure. The 30-something says she instantly feels more sensual and striking in the corset than she ever has in contemporary clothing, because, in her words, “I’m not fit like a 12-year-old boy.”As we journey with the author on her adventure with Victorian wear, the well-researched Chrisman addresses what she says are safety myths surrounding corsetry from the get-go, like the storied broken ribs and moved organs she claims have no scientific basis. She also explains why the waist is the one area of the human body that’s so easily, and safely, moldable. (Try wearing a corset on your thighs. No matter how tightly one laces, sadly nothing gives.)

On the plus side, Chrisman finds the supportive corset back straightens her posture like a board; in fact, current orthopedic garments for back pain look strikingly identical in shape. She says that breasts are supported from below to hold the bosom up and shoulders back in the “proud” posture that was so valued by the Victorian era—a far cry, she adds, from today’s uncomfortable bras that slump shoulders down and pull the body forward, often leaving painful grooves on the tops of shoulders and leading some of us to celebrate a “braless day” as its own luxurious entity.

Generations ago, posture was considered next to Godliness for a literal reason. “The very phrase ‘upright citizen’ comes down to us from the Victorians because of the connection they saw between posture and decent behavior,” explains Chrisman.Chrisman claims that the marked difference in her stature immediately changed how the outside world perceived and interacted with her. “My entire life I considered myself hopelessly clumsy, yet after I started wearing a corset, strangers began asking if I was a professional ballerina!” she recounts. “I was no longer slouching, my chin naturally came up, and I held my head higher—in an interesting connection of physiology and psychology, this not only made me feel personally more empowered, but also communicated a more alpha mentality to those around me,” she adds.

It’s interesting to note that Chrisman’s husband also takes to dressing in vintage Victorian wear with his wife. In a time when we often assume that only women bore all the high demands of fashion, it turns out that men had to meet discerning standards, too. They were also expected to hold perfect posture underneath cumbersome layers like suspenders, a waistcoat, a fussy collar (which had to be starched) that buttoned into the back of the shirt, and a large pocket watch that required daily winding and was weighted with heavy fobs and chains. “If a corset-wearer grows weary of holding herself erect, it’s possible to lean into the corset and be held up, like leaning into a hug,” says Chrisman. “Men, however, had no such support to lean on; the entire pressure of maintaining an upright bearing was on themselves alone.”The Victorian’s infatuation with persnickety garments basically required assistance for both genders with daily dressing. This aspect held some unexpected charm for Chrisman. “The way in which helping each other with our clothing brought us closer together and deepened our relationship was one of the sweetest elements of the experience—it’s like an intimate form of team-building exercise,” says Chrisman, alluding to a time when dressing routines helped distinguish and establish relationships between Victorians.As with every give, there’s usually a take. And Chrisman says the one thing she can’t do while wearing a corset is put down a big meal like she once enjoyed. Since the stomach can’t bloat with expansion, one feels full, faster. And yet this discovery became a pivotal turning point for Chrisman, who always refused to diet, though still battled the body image fight that so many women, regardless of size, often do.“One day, I suddenly realized that I didn’t have to worry anymore—that a corset had made me more aware of exactly when I was full, and exactly when I wanted food. It was an incredibly liberating realization, like I had stepped off the tightrope and onto firm ground,” she says, adding that she eats as she pleases and never leaves the table hungry, but with such portion control built in she doesn’t have to think about it.Wearing a corset doesn’t prevent Chrisman from the kind of active life Victorians enjoyed; she eschews a car (and even a driver’s license) to instead bike wherever she needs to go, and enjoys long strolls in the town where she routinely turns heads in and resides, having now embraced full Victorian wear from dramatic Edwardian hats to sweepingly full skirts with petticoats and kitten heel boots. (She makes many of her own pieces so that they stay authentic to the original fabric and cuts used by Victorians, and don’t resemble the polyester costume copies that one may see in a Halloween shop.)

For those looking to try a traditional corset, Chrisman advises going no more than 2 inches smaller than your starting waist measurement, and buying one that is marketed as a “tight-lacing corset,” which simply means that the design will support full-time wear and posture, and is not intended as a flimsier costume or boudoir-only wear; it’s not necessary to lace them uncomfortably tight in spite of the name. “Corsets are ultimately about support, foundation and structure, not simply about waist reduction,” she instructs.Also be aware that any elasticized garment like Spanx, girdles and bustiers are not the same thing. “They won’t provide the same support as a structured corset any more than a trampoline will hold up a person the same way a floor would,” she adds.So why did corsets go out of style? Contrary to popular belief that the suffragettes kicked them out as they emancipated women with the right to vote in the 1920s, it’s not so, says Chrisman. In fact, if you Google Susan B. Anthony images, you’ll see the unmistakable outline of a corset underneath the legendary suffragette’s dress. Chrisman instead attributes the demise in great part to Coco Chanel, who panned the corset in favor of vertical designs that sat better on a boyishly gamine body. And as with all things fashionable, trends always cycle in and out.The supposedly liberated woman of today often pines for one aspect of our great-grandmothers’ era, says Chrisman—a time when naturally full hips and a fleshy flush of health were revered, and the waist was considered the most erogenous zone of all. Might the corseted Victorian woman have been free in ways that the modern woman will never be?

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Daily Mail

'Wearing a corset is liberating!' Meet the woman living a modern-day Victorian life - with no cell phone, car, or home appliancesBy OLIVIA FLEMINGPUBLISHED: 10:15 EST, 14 November 2013 | UPDATED: 10:16 EST, 14 November 2013For more than 50 years, American women have cast off constrictive undergarments, which feminists have long criticized as symbols of repression.But for one Seattle resident, embracing the corset in the 21st century has been a tool of empowerment -- not oppression.For the last four years, 33-year-old Sarah Chrisman has not only worn a corset on a daily basis, she has also unabashedly embraced the 19th century, deciding to live a wholly Victorian-era lifestyle.Mrs Chrisman's new book, Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught me About the Past, the Present, and Myself, sees the massage therapist and writer chronicles her new way of life: ditching her cell phone, modern day clothes and her car.'I have always loved the Victorian era, ever since I was a little girl,' she told MailOnline. 'My first corset was given to me by my husband on my 29th birthday, and unexpectedly, I really thoroughly enjoyed it.'

Now, Mrs Chrisman makes all of her own clothes to fit a Victorian-era shape, rides a 100-year-old penny farthing bicycle and cooks with the guide of 19th century women's magazines.A typical day includes doing her laundry by hand with the 'proper temperature of water used back then - room temperature;' reading 19th century literature, etiquette guides and magazines, like a 1889 edition of Cosmopolitan. And when it comes to cleaning, Mrs Chrisman uses 'salt to clean the carpets.''I have always loved the Victorian era, ever since I was a little girl,' she told MailOnline. 'My first corset was given to me by my husband on my 29th birthday, and unexpectedly, I really thoroughly enjoyed it'

Her husband, Gabriel, a recent Masters of Library and Information Science graduate from the University of Washington who works at a local bicycle shop and library, is supportive of his wife's Victorian lifestyle.

'We both love history,' Mrs Chrisman explained. 'He participates and we have a lot of fun together. We're always experimenting with new ways to enrich our lives.'Friends are also supportive. 'They are intrigued,' explained Mrs Chrisman. 'The wonderful thing is, our friends are friends -- our interests are still the same. We still enjoy discussing academic matters and things like hiking.'And hiking, she says, is easier in her Victorian garb than one might think.

'I manage hiking quite well. I modeled my outfit off a photo of Fay Fuller, the first woman known to reach the summit of Mount Rainier in 1890. She was dressed in an "immodest" climbing outfit of her own devising.'After one year of wearing a corset every day, Mrs Chrisman said her waist went from 32 inches to 22 inches, she experienced fewer migraines and her posture improved. 'And honestly, the corset lets me know when I'm full! I don't have to worry about eating too much,' she laughed.But her desire to delve further into the Victorian lifestyle, and wear a corset every day, seems to have the public divided.

'People have mixed reactions,' she admitted. 'Some are enthusiastic and positive. The other day an old man ran out of a restaurant to tell me I made his day, he said: "You look beautiful."'But there are perfect strangers who find what I wear such a point of contention. Some women scream oppression -- that I choose to wear a corset. But I focus on the positives. I don't find it restricting at all, in fact I'd venture to say that it's liberating to live how I want to!'Mrs Chrisman adds that every day, she and her husband find 'wonderful insights' into the Victorian way of life.

In Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught me About the Past, the Present, and Myself, Mrs Chrisman chronicles her new way of life

'19th century furniture has so many mirrors!' she said. 'They are used to reflect the light as much as possible -- to create a more open space by expanding the natural daylight.'Mrs Chrisman, who owns a home telephone and uses lights and electricity, said that 'as far as technology goes, people don't realize how early a lot of technology came into being'.'You could say the Victorian internet was born in the 19th century,' she said, referencing a book by Tom Standage, who examined the revolutionary telegraph, which he labeled as 'the world's first Internet'.

'And in the 1870s, two inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell independently designed the telephone,' she added. 'And the world's first public electricity supply was provided in late 1881, when the streets of Godalming in the UK were lit with electric light.'While the couple minimize using modern elements 'when we can,' she conceded that they 'still live in the world'.

Timeless Appeal of the Hourglass Figure

WHEN my husband gave me my first corset as a birthday present in 2009 I was to put it mildly less than thrilled.By: Sarah A Chrisman

I had after all specifically told him not to buy me one.

In one of those conversations when both halves of a couple are talking but neither side seems to be listening I had been rattling off everything I thought I knew about corsets while my historian husband had been commenting on how hourglass figures shaped the Victorian "look" we both love. When I tore open my birthday gift a few weeks later and found a set of silken stays I was somewhat irritated but not at all surprised.

It seemed the thing to do would be to try the corset on, model it for my husband then shove it to the farthest corner of my wardrobe, never to let it see the light of day again. Every comment I'd ever been indoctrinated with about corsets had led me to believe simply being in the same room as one would asphyxiate me and shatter my bones (while at the same time robbing me of my right to vote).

Yet trying on the corset - even that very first time - I was shocked by how comfortable it was. In our previous conversation my husband had told me about stumbling across one enthusiast's comment that a corset was like a hug that lasts all day. At the time I had scoffed and rolled my eyes at the idea but now I found it to be exactly the case. It was a dear little hug that followed me everywhere I went - and the effect of that embrace upon my figure was remarkable.

I had always loved the beauty of Victorian garments, their elegance and femininity. Yet I had always looked on 19th-century photographs and fashion plates with much the same lip-quivering air as a pauper peering through a keyhole at a glimpse of royal regalia, convinced these wonderful marvels were not accessible to one such as myself.

My shape was all wrong and I believed I would never have the graceful form of the women in the illustrations who wore the clothing I coveted. Exercise hadn't done it, skipping countless desserts hadn't made it happen and yet this simple supportive garment of silk and steel had accomplished it instantly. The corset was my key to unlocking the world of the Victorian era - a world to which I had been desperate to belong my entire life.

Before long I was spending every spare moment researching this fascinating garment - and wearing it every day. As I gained first-hand experience, together with my research, what I learned often astonished me. Contrary to 20th-century claims 19th-century women by and large actually loved their corsets.

Some people recognise the corset for what it is - some don't

In the time when women were wearing stays the very few voices railing out against them came not from the women but from male moralists who objected to fashionable clothing on the grounds that it incited lust.

The seemingly infinite modern misconceptions about alleged organ displacement are easily refuted with a quick glance at a simple anatomical chart: the viscera of the lower abdomen are nearly all hollow. The main effect of a corset anatomically speaking is to reduce the capacity of the stomach and intestines so that a person feels full faster when they eat.

As for the tired old chestnut about not being able to breathe in a corset I'm sure it would have amused the opera divas of the 1880s and 1890s who inspired awe in audiences before the days of mechanically amplified sound - and who are so obviously corseted in their photographic portraits.

Within a few months of receiving my first corset (and wearing it on a daily basis) I was already altering my modern clothes to fit the shape of my new waist. Within a year I was sewing entire Victorian outfits and wearing them as my everyday clothes. I had always wanted to wear these fashions and one day it finally occurred to me that there was no reason I couldn't.

I still do wear my corset every day and over the past five years people's reactions have been interesting.

The best was the old man who told me I reminded him of his first sweetheart. But with the good came the bad and I received my fair share of hate mail.

Some people recognise the corset for what it is - some don't. Waists have fallen so far off the radar of modern people that a significant number can't identify a corset when they see one. "What a pretty dress!" they'll say, attributing the entirety of the hourglass figure to a flimsy piece of cotton to which no one gave a second glance before I started corseting.

The clothes that I wear and the lifestyle that I lead is almost entirely for myself - it is my life after all. And the small portion that's not for me? I do it to make people re-evaluate their prejudices about the past. I do it as a reminder that history has always been populated by real people.

Most of all I do it to show others whose style or sentiments might be different from that which is currently accepted by the mainstream that every individual has a right to express themselves no matter what form that expression might take.

Victorian Secrets by Sarah A Chrisman is published by Skyhorse Publishing, £16.99 (RRP £18.99). To buy a copy with free UK postage and packing please call 0871 988 8451 or visit expressbooks.co.uk. You can also send a cheque or PO (payable to The Express) to: The Express Orders Dept, 1 Broadland Business Park, Norwich NR7 0WF

Island Portrait: Sarah Chrisman as "Nana"

Island Portraits: 27 January 2011

***In a seaport town in the late 19th-century Pacific Northwest, a group of friends find themselves drawn together —by chance, by love, and by the marvelous changes their world is undergoing. In the process, they learn that the family we choose can be just as important as the ones we're born into. Join their adventures inThe Tales of Chetzemoka

First Wheel in Town:A Victorian Cycling Club Romance​​In the summer of 1881, a Pacific Northwest town is buzzing with curiosity over a mysterious package received by handsome young Dr. Brown. Kitty Butler, the town dressmaker, is as curious as anyone else. She only knows one thing about that crate in the post office: everyone else's guesses about its contents are all wrong.

When Dr. Brown unpacks the crate and reveals the first bicycle the town has ever seen, he wants to share his enthusiasm for this revolutionary new piece of technology —but encounters overwhelming hostility instead of the excitement he'd expected. The only one who seems positively interested is the pretty young widow Kitty Butler, and Dr. Brown soon realizes how much he needs her support…

Love Will Find A Wheel:A Victorian Cycling Club Romance "I'm sure he'll be glad you're here —once he gets used to it." When Jacob Simmons arrives in Washington Territory in the summer of 1882 and receives a glacial reception from his uncle Silas, he appreciates Dr. Brown's encouraging prediction but doesn't have much faith in it. Jacob's not even sure Silas will have time to get used to his presence, let alone consider him welcome. If the young man can't meet the draconian requirements of a contract with his business investors, he'll face exile and financial ruin, thus fulfilling old Silas' prediction that he would be just as dismal a failure as his father. His whole future rests on finding a market for a remarkable new machine —and he'll need help selling them. *** Addie Kellam is an incredibly lonely young woman. She's more comfortable with books than with other people, yet she longs for the sort of romance she reads about in stories. It's something she fears she'll never experience herself, since even friendship seems elusive. She envies the cameraderie her brother finds in his cycling club, but the only bicycles in the town of Chetzemoka are specifically designed for men. There aren't any wheels for women anywhere —are there?

A Rapping At The Door:A Victorian Cycling Club Suspense Story When the delivery of a mysterious letter to Silas Hayes' mansion is followed by the arrival of a beautiful young woman who claims she can communicate with the dead, Nurse McCoy sniffs trouble in the wind. It's obvious to her that the newcomer is after Silas' fortune, but he is helplessly in awe of the medium's eerily intimate knowledge of his past and her seemingly supernatural abilities. Meanwhile, Kitty Brown's yearning to reach out to the departed spirit of her first love is making her push away her new husband, just when she needs him the most. The whole situation is a dreadful mess, and McCoy's got to straighten it all out before Silas' nephew and his bride come back from their honeymoon. Honestly, she doesn't know how any of the fools in this world would get along without her…

Delivery Delayed:A Victorian Cycling Club RomanceIt's obvious to everyone in the Chetzemoka cycling club that Lizzie and Isaac could make each other very happy —but does anyone really listen to their friends about affairs of the heart? A prim schoolmarm and a stoic steamship captain are hardly the people to discuss their sentiments, especially with each other. The smallest challenges seem like huge obstacles, even with everyone else trying their best to bring them together. When progress finally seems possible, a well-intentioned little girl steps in with the kind of help they'd be better off without. Will the situation be resolved in time, or will Isaac ship out for good?